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CHAPTER V 
UNCLE SAM’S FIRST WAR GARDEN 
How the Boys at Camp Dix Went Over the Top 
W ITH the mention of the word “war” there im- 
mediately flashes across the mind a vision of 
long lines of soldiers marching through streets 
crowded with flag-waving civilians; or of those same 
long lines drilling, wheeling, and maneuvering on the 
camp parade-ground; or of stern-faced fighters with 
bayonets fixed charging across a smoke-clouded field 
toward the enemy’s positions. It was most appropriate 
and fitting, therefore, that the term “war garden” 
should come to be associated with actual soldiers. 
It was at Camp Dix, New Jersey, that the first sure- 
enough war garden was planted. At that big army 
cantonment there was begun the first big undertaking 
in the United States whereby the American army 
started to help feed itself. 
Early in the spring of 1918 the National War Garden 
Commission, cooperating with the conservation and 
reclamation division of the Quartermaster-General’s 
office, effected the plans which promptly led to the plant- 
ing of a four-hundred-acre war garden at Camp Dix, 
that city of 48,000 or more soldiers where men were 
being prepared for overseas duty. This was a demon- 
stration garden which was not only the largest but also 
the most picturesque the country had seen. It was not 
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